Anna Sáfár

Revisiting problems with foreign language aptitude.

Abstract This study investigated three of the issues recently raised in connection with the traditional concept of foreign language aptitude: the relationship between foreign language aptitude and working memory and phonological short-term memory capacity, the role of foreign language aptitude in predicting success in the framework of focus-on-form foreign language instruction, and the stability of language aptitude and phonological short-term memory in the course of language learning. The participants of our research were 40 students of an English-Hungarian bilingual secondary school and 21 students in a regular Hungarian secondary school. Language aptitude was assessed both at the beginning and the end of the academic year. Our results support the existence of an effect of language learning experience on language aptitude. We also concluded that foreign language aptitude does not play a highly important role in communicative language teaching combined with focus-on-form instruction.

Handedness prevalence in the deaf: Meta-analyses

An under-investigated aspect of handedness, a biological proxy for cerebral laterality for language, is its prevalence amongst deaf individuals. We present four sets of meta-analyses on studies measuring handedness prevalence in deaf individuals, comprising 31 data sets and totaling 5,392 participants (4,606 deaf, 786 hearing). Deaf individuals were found to be 2.61 times more likely to be non-right-handed and 2.25 times more likely to be left-handed compared to their hearing counterparts. When handedness was measured by means of manipulative actions, the weighted estimates of handedness prevalence for deaf populations were 17.70% and 14.70% for non-right- and left-handedness respectively; when handedness was measured by means of sign actions, the prevalence was 10.60% and 9.70%, respectively. Yet, when comparing studies that measured handedness in the same deaf individuals using both manipulative and sign actions, no difference was found in their handedness prevalence. This pattern is taken to suggest that the higher prevalence of atypical handedness in the deaf population may be linked to delayed language acquisition.

Mutual intelligibility among the sign languages of Belgium and the Netherlands

Abstract In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the southern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narratives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic structures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore, the results at least partially confirm our hypothesis that NGT signers benefit more from mouthings than LSFB signers, uncovering a source of intelligibility that is unique to sign languages.

Towards a classification of weak hand holds

Abstract The two symmetrical manual articulators (the hands) in signed languages are a striking modalityspecific phonetic property. The weak hand can maintain the end position of an articulation while the other articulator continues to produce additional signs. This weak hand spreading (hold) has been analysed from various perspectives, highlighting its prosodic, syntactic, or discourse properties. The present study investigates corpus data from Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) and Russian Sign Language (RSL), two unrelated sign languages, in order to question the necessity of a sign-language specific notion of ‘buoy’ introduced in the discourse analysis of American Sign Language by Liddell (2003). Buoys are defined as weak hand holds that serve as a visible landmark throughout a stretch of discourse, and several types are distinguished based on their function and form. In the analysis of nearly two and a half hours of narratives and conversations from NGT and RSL, we found over 600 weak hand holds. We show that these holds can be analysed in terms of regular phonetic, syntactic, semantic, or discourse notions (or a combination thereof) familiar from the linguistic study of spoken languages, without the need for a sign language-specific notion of ‘buoy’.